When Christians talk about or preach the Gospel, they often mean, “Jesus died for my sins so I can go to heaven when I die.” But the New Testament gives a very different definition of the saving Gospel. We see the early church’s preaching in Acts 8, where Luke describes the one saving Gospel-word in three closely related ways.
First, he tells us that those who were scattered “went about preaching the word as gospel” (Acts 8:4).
Second, he focuses on Philip and says that he “went down to the city of Samaria and proclaimed the Messiah to them” (Acts 8:5).
And third, a few verses later he summarizes:
“When they believed Philip as he proclaimed the gospel about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Messiah, they were being baptized, both men and women” (Acts 8:12).
These are not three different messages. To “preach the word as gospel,” to “proclaim the Messiah,” and to “proclaim the gospel about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Messiah” are three ways of describing the same saving Gospel about the kingdom.
So in Acts 8 the saving Gospel is the good news about the coming Kingdom of God and about Jesus, whom God has made “both lord and Messiah” (Acts 2:36). And by “the word,” Philip did not mean “your Bible”; he meant the concrete announcement that the one God, the Father, announced His coming Kingdom, and that He has chosen a unique human person—His own Son by procreation and Son of David by Mary—to rule that coming Kingdom.
Philip is not changing or inventing a new message; he is continuing the very same Gospel preached by Jesus himself.
Mark 1:14-15 shows us that “Jesus came into Galilee, preaching God's Gospel and saying, ‘The time is fulfilled, and the Kingdom of God has drawn near; repent and believe the gospel’."
Luke records Jesus saying:
“I must preach the Kingdom of God to the other cities also, because for this purpose I was sent” (Luke 4:43). Later Luke shows Jesus going through cities and villages, “proclaiming and bringing the good news of the Kingdom of God” (Luke 8:1). By extension, Jesus sends out his apostles to do the same.
In Luke 9:1–2, 6 we read:
“He called the twelve together… and sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal… And they went out and went through the villages, proclaiming the gospel and healing everywhere.”
The same commission appears in Matthew 10:1, 5–7, where Jesus summoned his twelve and sent them out, instructing them:
“As you go, proclaim, saying, ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near.’”
The task is explicitly to announce that the Kingdom is near—not that it is already here.
So the Gospel as Jesus and the apostles preached it is clearly about that coming Kingdom of God. This Kingdom message is tied to Jesus’ own identity. When Peter answers Jesus saying: “You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16), Jesus immediately goes on to speak of the future glory of the Son of Man in his coming Kingdom.
“You are really blessed, Simon son of Jonah, because human flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my Father who is in heaven! I also tell you, you are Peter, and on this rock I intend to build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overpower it. I will give you the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven, and whatever you ban on earth will have been banned in heaven, and whatever you allow on earth will have been allowed in heaven.” (Matthew 16:17-19)
The pattern is consistent: the Gospel centers on the Kingdom of God and on Jesus as the Messiah, the human king of that coming Kingdom.
After Jesus’ death and resurrection, no one changed this Gospel into a different, more abstract message—a “spiritual,” non-literal feeling of “the kingdom in your heart” or “the kingdom as your church.”
In Ephesus, Paul enters the synagogue and for three months “reasoned and persuaded them about the Kingdom of God” (Acts 19:8). Later, speaking to the elders from Ephesus, he describes his ministry as testifying to “the gospel of the grace of God” and then reminds them that they will no longer see his face, “among whom I went about proclaiming the Kingdom” (Acts 20:24–25). For Paul, “the gospel of the grace of God” and the proclamation of the Kingdom are one and the same overall message: grace is how God forgives and calls people into that coming Kingdom, and the Kingdom is the goal and framework of that grace.
At the end of Acts, Luke underlines this again.
In Rome, Paul is “testifying about the Kingdom of God and trying to convince them about Jesus from the Law of Moses and from the Prophets” (Acts 28:23). The book closes with Paul “proclaiming the Kingdom of God and teaching about the Lord Jesus Messiah with all boldness and without hindrance” (Acts 28:31). This is the bookend to the beginning of Acts, where the risen Jesus is speaking to the apostles “about the Kingdom of God” (Acts 1:3). Acts begins with Jesus teaching about the Kingdom and ends with Paul preaching the Kingdom of God and the lord Jesus, the Messiah. From beginning to end, the apostolic Gospel is proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah, king of the coming kingdom.
Paul’s letters agree with this. In Romans he says that he has been “set apart for the gospel of God… concerning His Son,” and he describes Jesus as coming from “the seed of David according to the flesh” (i.e., Mary, Luke 1:30-35) and being “appointed Son of God in power by resurrection” (Romans 1:1–4). The gospel of God is “concerning His Son,” the promised descendant of David, now exalted as lord Messiah. Again we see the same core Gospel message: God’s coming Kingdom and His Son, the King.
This biblical definition saves us from a truncated or abstract gospel. If you say, “Jesus died for my sins so I can go to heaven,” you are not yet preaching the apostolic Gospel. In Scripture, the cross and resurrection are essential because they are God’s way of dealing with sin so that people can inherit the Kingdom. But forgiveness by repentance and acknowledging Jesus as both lord and Messiah is not your final destination. His death is not only proof that “God loved the world in this way, that He gave His unique procreated Son” (John 3:16a), but also God’s declaration “that every person who believes in him should not perish but have the life” of that Kingdom age to come. This also reshapes our hope.
Jesus did not promise that Christians would escape to heaven when they die. Jesus clearly blessed the meek, “for they will inherit the earth” (Matthew 5:5). He spoke of “the renewal of all things,” when the Son of Man will sit on his glorious throne and the apostles will sit on twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel (Matthew 19:28–29). These things cannot be in heaven but on a restored earth, which we will possess in new spiritual bodies. As Paul says:
“If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body. So as it is written, ‘The first man, Adam, became a living person’; the last Adam became a life-imparting spirit. Yet the spiritual did not come first, but the natural. Then the spiritual came after that” (1 Corinthians 15:44–46).
Paul also summarizes the faith of Christians like this:
"For us there is one God, the Father, from whom are all things and we for Him, and one Lord, Jesus Messiah, through whom are all things and we through him” (1 Corinthians 8:6).
The one God is the Father; the one lord is the human Messiah through whom God will rule the world.
If this is the one saving Gospel, then it demands your complete attention and, very likely, a change of mind and perspective. Jesus came preaching, “Repent and believe the gospel” (Mark 1:15). In Samaria, when they believed Philip “as he proclaimed the gospel about the Kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Messiah, they were being baptized” (Acts 8:12). To believe the Gospel is to accept as true that God’s Kingdom is coming, that Jesus has been made both lord and Messiah (Acts 2:36), that God has raised him from the dead, and that he will return to establish that promised Kingdom. To be baptized, then, is to publicly pledge allegiance to the king of the coming Kingdom.
In sum, the saving Gospel is the good news about the Gospel of God and that He has appointed a unique human—His own Son as the Messiah, whom He raised from the dead—to rule the Kingdom of his earthly father David.
The pressing question for each of us is whether we have believed this Gospel of the Kingdom and the name of Jesus Messiah, and whether we are living now in loyal obedience to the Law of Messiah (Gal 6:2; 1Cor 9:21), so that when the Kingdom finally comes we may indeed inherit the earth and rule survivors from the nations with our king Jesus (Zechariah 14:16–19; Ezekiel 36:23–24, 36; cp. 1Cor 6:2; Rev 2.26-27; 5:10).
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